The general director of the InfoWatch group of companies and the co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, Natalya Kaspersky, considers Bitcoin the development of a group of American cryptographers who worked on behalf of the special services. She said this, speaking at the St. Petersburg University ITMO, where Kaspersky presented a presentation on "Modern technologies - the basics of information and cyber-wars." In her opinion, the group of American cryptographers is hiding under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin creator, but did not name any concrete people and evidence of their involvement in the development of Bitcoin.

Revenues from commissions of South Korean banks that provide accounts to clients of crypto-exchanges increased 36 times compared to the previous year. Such data was obtained by the Financial Services Commission of South Korea (FSS) as a result of verification of six banks - Woori Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Nonghyup Bank, Korea Development Bank and Industrial Bank.

Expert Bitcoin lawyer Trace Mayer suggested that the price of the first cryptocurrency could reach $ 115,000 in 2018 after the correction phase ends. However, he stresses that such a figure of $ 115,000 - despite the theoretical possibility based on previous cycles, will be "much overstated". Now Bitcoin is recovering after the fall, the largest since 2013.

Japanese financial group Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) is launching a program to open a new exchange and issue its own virtual currency MUFG coin. Controlling the exchanges, MUFG plans to restrain the price fluctuations of the MUFG Coin cryptocurrency, so that it can be used consistently for calculations. Thanks to a centralized distribution, MUFG coin will be directly controlled by the bank. Additionally, the bank will be able to control the coin value, which will be about 1 yen. Users will be able to use coins with the help of smartphones to pay for goods and services.

An entrepreneur from Australia, Jackson Palmer, is amazed that, invented in joke in 2013, the Dogecoin (DOGE) cryptocurrency at the peak at the end of December reached a capitalization of $ 2 billion and attracted dozens, maybe hundreds of thousands of new users, to cryptocurrencies. At the time of publication, the capitalization of DOGE is about 1.3 billion dollars. In 2013, Jackson Palmer created the Dogecoin - fork of Litecoin with a higher emission and a short block - and named it after the Chinese breed of shiba-inu. For a nice image, users nicknamed the coin a baby money. Therefore, the Australian wanted to show the absurdity of huge investments in unstable assets during the 2013 cryptocurrency boom.

Rumors about the launch of the Pavel Durov's company the cryptocurrency based on the Telegram messenger began to appear in early December. On December 21, a message appeared on Facebook of Anton Rosenberg, a former employee of Vkontakte and Telegram that the messenger team plans to start an ICO project called TON (Telegram Open Network) and release its own cryptocurrency Gram, which will be built into the messenger. At the same time, there was an ad on YouTube, though it did not reveal any specific details.

A long-time opponent of crypto-currency, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he regrets past negative comments about Bitcoin, in particular what he called a scam at the New York conference. Now, while Dimon continues to assert "this topic does not interest him at all," he recognized as "reality" the core Bitcoin technology - blockchain and revised his opinion on the ICO, saying that each campaign should be approached "individually."

A physicist from Toronto, Alex Beath shared with Fortune his assumptions about the safety of Bitcoin and its connection with quantum computers. The scientist believes that if you previously talked about quantum computers hypothetically, then after connecting to the IT giants race, you can start applying them in practice in the near future. In the first place, cryptocurrencies will be under threat, but it will be the sign that the quantum computer is really exists.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to register five exchange-traded index funds (ETFs) tied to the Bitcoin rate - the so-called marginal and inverse ETFs. The proposed funds are designed to track trade in Bitcoin futures markets. According to the application, ETF seek to provide investors with an income that multiplies the profits in the core market and represents a short-term investment.